Back at the May Classic

Sutton finishes with 11 points, four rebounds, two assists and two blocks.

His sky for a put-back dunk was impressive, but this sequence late in the game said more about him as a player:

He succumbed to heavy pressure as Full Package Elite tried to make a furious comeback. His turnover gave the team some energy — and two points. But Sutton composed himself, and the next time down the floor he found open space. A teammate found him there, and Sutton didn’t shy from driving toward the rim. But instead of going up and trying to draw contact — and risking a no-call — he dished to a wide open teammate for the open bucket.

After the game, Sutton commented on how awesome it was to open The Herald-Times today and see his picture.

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It’s Day 2, and the buzz here is Jeremiah Rivers. According to the Washington Times, which got the story from an unnamed source “close to the program,” Rivers will join Indiana this year and be eligible to play starting in 2009.

Rivers is transferring from Georgetown after two years. He’s also the son of Boston Celtic’s coach (and former Marquette star) Doc Rivers.

Rivers, 6-4 guard who is most noted for his defensive prowess, took an unofficial visit to Indiana yesterday and wore a Hoosier’s sweatshirt. But he was also heard telling people in the gym that he was still considering offers from other schools.

We’ll try to get confirmation on this as soon as we can.

But right now Maurice Sutton is playing his second game for Indiana Elite LNO right now. And he just seconds ago thrilled the crowd by skying over a scrum in front, grabbing a rebound high in the air and slamming the ball. He also drew a foul and hit his free throw to put his team ahead 42-37.

How many scholarships do we have left with Rivers coming in as a junior next year? Is he going to walk on? I’m sure Doc could afford it. If he takes a scholly, from my calculations then we have only 1 left for the class of 2009 and then will have only 2 available for the class of 2010.

With Rivers, we now have 2 scholly’s left for 2008 and 2009. Sutton would take 1 of those, which leaves us with 1 for 2009.

We also will only have 1 in 2010 which will result from Dumes graduating.

So the team you see on the floor next year is the team you are going to see for a few years. With only 2 four star players on that squad, it is going to be an interesting next few years to say the least. Crean needs to realize that he can shoot higher here than he did at Marquette.

I can’t give you guys an actual count on this because of the things we don’t know.

But, obviously, this is the biggest concern of IU fans right now. Chris Engel, the former basketball beat writer for the IDS, just wandered over to the media area here. He had drawn a scholarship chart on the back of his AMC program.

I’ll make a blog post about this later today. It obviously needs to be addressed.

He should take back some of those offers in the class of 2009 if they are under 6’7”, we need BIGS! We definitely don’t need anymore 6’4” PG/SGs. We’d only have Sutton, Capobianco, Pritchard, and Elston at this point in a couple years. And I hear Elston is more of a 3. I hope Crean realizes that he can probably get some 4/5 star recruits and shouldn’t settle for 3 star guards unless he is going do nothing but run and gun. And I’m not sure how well that will work in the Big Ten.

Dont worry about “stars”. Its about putting the right group of kids together. Sutton is the first priority here. We need a lanky guy in the middle regardless of his weight right now. Then depending on what is going to happen with Rivers, we need another C. Pull the Hulls offer now, focus on bigs. One for SVT and maybe one for the best player we can still realistically get for 09.

f the kid has the kind of game people are taking about we could sure use him (especially for some depth & experience at point guard) but I agree that schollys for the next couple years are quickly getting scarce and may need to go elsewhere (Van Treese, Jamil Wilson, etc). However, as it has been pointed out, he is Doc Rivers son so I am assuming affording tuition is not an issue for him. Is it possible he could join the team as a preferred walk-on (at least year to year)? Does anyone know if this was this the case at Georgetown? Also, wouldn’t him coming to IU from Georgetown be ironic considering the last son of a famous player (Ewing) we had transferred from IU to the Hoyas 😀

It’s funny saying Crean didn’t realize it would “be so easy” to recruit. Just maybe he’s that good at recruiting. I’m with Ryan. I think coach knows exactly what he’s doing. You guys make it sound like he’s stumbling around in the dark and these quality players just happen to be signing. After 40 years in the desert I’m really looking forward to the future.